Andrew Martin: Murder At Deviation Junction

'Important to have a good man in place here,' said Bowman, looking all about the station. He was trying to butter Crystal up for some reason.

Crystal nodded back at him, saying, 'The marshalling yard gives a deal of trouble - or would do to a chap lacking experience,' and he waved his hand over towards the abandoned mineral train.

Marshalling yard! It was nothing but a passing loop with siding attached. Over Crystal's shoulder, beyond the 'up' end of the platform, I could see the white bank that led up to the black edge of the woods overlooking that end of the station. It was lit up by the danger lamp of the signal standing at the foot of it. As I looked on, two of the gangers seemed to be fired out of those woods and began scrambling down the bank.

'Takes the worst of the weather, does this place,' Crystal was saying.

Under the red display, the two gangers tumbled fast down the incline, creating an explosion of snow.

'Quick judgment,' Crystal was saying. 'That's the leading requirement of a man in my place ...'

The first two had gained the 'up' end of the platform now, and here they started to run. Behind and above them, four more men came out of the woods, though at a slower pace than the first four; and these four slow men were carrying a cricket bag between them (that was my first thought, at any event) which they kept level as they came down the bank, boots first, in a controlled slide.

Crystal was saying, 'And of course, the rule book only gets you so far . . .'

The first of the running blokes was level with us now.

'Mr Crystal,' he panted, 'you've to send . . . You've to get . . . You've to get a wire ...'

The bloke was out of puff, couldn't get the words out. Crystal, about ready to blow up at this impertinence, was turning slowly towards him. The cricket bag was no cricket bag, but a horse blanket, and it was coming up fast behind Crystal like a dark wave.

The four men spread it before the stationmaster's boots, under the rushing snow: cricket stumps threaded through black broadcloth. That's what the body looked like. The suit coat was open, and beneath it was a yellowish stuff like pasteboard - the flesh of the man himself. There was no head, but then I saw the skull, resting by the waist. One of the blokes picked it up, set it down on the blanket at the top of the suit coat, and then stepped back to look, as if he'd just finished a jigsaw. The skull seemed too small: just a topknot, a tiny, dinted stone - something to be going on with until a more impressive object was found.

We all kept silence.

Mr Crystal's arms were tightly folded. I could not recall him standing like that before, but I knew what he was thinking: paperwork. He stared down at the body as the snow fell.

Paperwork by the armful.

Presently, one of the blokes said, 'Seen better days, that lad has.'

Crystal turned towards the nearest bloke:

'Why d'you bring it to me?'

'You're the governor, en't you?' said another of the blokes.

'Was it discovered inside station bounds?'

One of the four who'd carried the blanket jerked his thumb in the direction of 'up':

'Wayside cabin over yonder. Stowed under a load of stuff, he was.'

'What stuff?'

'Fire irons, coal, sacking - general railway articles.'

Crystal flashed into rage.

'That cabin's disused. It's for the old line that was taken up. What were you doing in there?'

'Tommy Granger -' said the spokesman, pointing to one of his fellows. 'He was hunting up a shovel.'

'Why did he not have his own shovel?'

'That doesn't matter,' I put in.

'Every man was specifically instructed to fetch his own shovel,' Crystal was saying, as I held up my warrant card in the view of everyone.

'Very likely a felony's been committed,' I said. 'I'll take charge.'

'A felony?' said Crystal. Then: 'You'll bloody not take charge' - and he'd cursed. He coloured up immediately, but carried on speaking. 'As stationmaster it falls to me to investigate all the circumstances, and make up a report for the line superintendent.'

I thought: I'm going to have to arrest the bugger. He'll lose his position.

'This falls under the head of "accident occurring on railway premises",' Crystal was saying, as I spied another man advancing through the snow at the platform end. He carried some object I couldn't make out.

I watched him for a while and then bent over the body, pulling the flap of the man's topcoat and making a search of his pockets. They were all quite empty. The last of the snow gangers was level with us now and, looking up, I saw that he held two objects. The first was a length of rope.

'Cut it down from the roof beam just above him,' he said. 'Bloke hanged himself,' he ran on, and he was looking at all of us as he spoke, making a kind of appeal.

The second object he held was a camera case of similar design to the one slung about the neck of Stephen Bowman. No - although weathered, it was the very spit.

'Found this half-frozen into the stream,' he said. 'Just on the edge, like. It was only a little way below the cabin -'

The man was shaking with cold. Everybody was eyeing him, and he didn't like it.

'I was making to step on it . . . use it as a stepping stone for crossing the brook . . . Then I thought it might be his -'

He pointed at the bones.

'What is this?' said Crystal, looking from the dead man's camera case to the one hung about Stephen Bowman's neck. 'A flaming camera club?'

Taking the case from the man, I turned about to look at Bowman, and the silver flask was in his gloved hand. I opened the carrying case and took out the camera, which was a black cube in fair condition, given where it had been. There were round switches more or less at the corners, so that it looked as though it was meant to move on wheels - a miniature wagon. Attached to the back of the thing were rusted clips that ought to have held another part of it. I moved a catch and a rubber pyramid rose up. You looked through that to take a picture.

I had my eyes on Bowman as I held the camera.

His words came slowly through the snow.

'The changing box is missing - the box that holds the slides.'

'That holds the . . . exposures?' I said.

The colour was all gone from Bowman's face.

Crystal stood stock still, his moustache collecting snowflakes at a great rate. Most of the snow gang had had enough, and were moving away towards the station house. It was that or become like the man in the blanket. This was not bad weather but something more - this stuff falling from the sky was out to bury us. I looked back at Bowman, and he was all wrong, could not hold my eye. I made a lurch towards the station buildings. I then heard a sound which was not snow falling, but a coloured spray flying from the mouth of Bowman. His hand wiped at his mouth as though he'd just eaten rather than done the opposite, and looking down at the pinkish stuff now lying on the whitened platform, I realised how beautiful the snow had been until that moment.

Chapter Four

Nine hours after the discovery, I looked out of the window of the station building, and the night air was suddenly clear, like a stopped clock. The train was long gone. The engine had detached from it, and taken a run at the drift that lay around the bend. It had just gone bang at the snow and had cut through it directly. The train had then carried on towards Whitby, taking the wife and Harry with it. They were in for a weary drag, but Lydia had made Harry a pillow with her wrap, and they would be in time to connect with the last York train. Duty required me to stay at Stone Farm, and Lydia had quite understood:

'No sense in shirking with your interview coming up.'

She was pushing the pace all right.

I'd then waded through the snow on the bank with two of the blokes from the snow gang, and they'd showed me the cabin where the main discovery had been made. It had been used as a shelter by the platelayers when the direction of the line had been slightly altered years before. The line now went the seaward side of the bank rather than the landward side. A short stretch of the old line remained as part of stationmaster Crystal's empire: Deviation Junction.